New Fitbits can sync with iPhones, Androids via Bluetooth 4.0

The little fitness gadgets just got more tech-friendly.

Fitbit users: ever think to yourself, "I wish this thing would just sync wirelessly with my phone and be done with it?" Your wish has now been granted. Fitbit has announced that it's offering two new products targeted at a wider range of demographics, both aimed at taking the little pedometer-on-steroids to the next level. In particular, the new Fitbit One not only adds some extra lifestyle features on top of the previous Fitbit, it also gains the ability to sync with computers and (some) mobile devices over Bluetooth 4.0 without the need to use a connector.

The Fitbit One largely boasts many of the same features as the old Fitbit—it can track your steps in a day like a pedometer, track the number of floors you have climbed on the stairs, and even track your sleep cycles (useful for people like me who sleep poorly and want to see their sleep data). But now, the Fitbit One can also slowly wake you up from sleep. It has a "silent alarm" that vibrates in order to gently wake you up, similar to some other sleep gadgets already on the market. The idea is that you will feel more well-rested when woken up slowly as opposed to being jarred awake by an alarm clock, and there's the added benefit that the vibrations on your Fitbit won't wake up any sleeping mates who might be nearby.

More importantly, the Fitbit One now has Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities and can be used to sync directly with certain smartphones. According to the company, Fitbit One can sync its data with the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, and third-generation iPad. Compatibility with "certain Android smartphones" coming soon. The mobile apps for iOS and Android have also been updated to show activity charts and leaderboards, just like the Fitbit website. Fitbit One is the same price as the old Fitbit at $99.95.

The second new product appears to be geared toward a more generalized demographic. For $59.95, the Fitbit Zip is more like a "Fitbit Lite"—it tracks your steps and distance, but not floors or sleep cycles, and it doesn't have the ability to wake you up. It does, however, also have Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities and can wirelessly sync with the same mobile devices as the Fitbit One, so you can use the data with the Fitbit apps or website immediately. Unlike the Fitbit One (or even the old Fitbit), Fitbit Zip does not have a rechargeable battery—the company says it has a 4-6 month battery life and can easily be replaced when needed.

I've been a Fitbit user since January of this year, but a fan of fitness gadgets for much longer. As I wrote in April, the Fitbit in particular has actually gotten me out of the house more often than anything I had used in the past—largely because it showed me how little I actually walked in a day (which any pedometer would do), and the website rankings with friends. I'm a competitive person, so when I see that everyone else has average daily steps far ahead of mine, I feel like I should walk around more to bump my average up.

And there are a lot of Fitbit users out there, so it seems as if Fitbit might currently be the fitness gadget du jour among the fairly young and tech-friendly crowd. Many of my friends and family are on the Fitbit website, allowing me to see their own progress and compete against them in steps and floors climbed. (Thank goodness my home has multiple floors and that my office is on a different floor from where the caffeine resides. I would be completely screwed on that metric).

The Fitbit Zip is available starting Tuesday, September 17, while the Fitbit One is available in "mid-October." Sounds like it's about time to drop your old Fitbit into a toilet and "accidentally" flush, right?

My house is small enough that my fitbit syncs as soon as I walk in the door. I just don't like having to charge it via the computer. But then I only need to do that every couple of weeks, and I use an add-on service that emails me when the battery is getting low. I've never tried the sleep tracking.

Syncing via phone would be nice on vacations. Do lots of walking then.

Mostly surprised I haven't lost it or sent it through the wash yet.

BTW, anyone seen that a fitbit will sync via anyone's base station? Somebody had one at work and mine would sync with my own account when ever I walked by her cube.

My problem with the Fitbit is how you wear it. I have a Nike Fuelband, you wear it on your wrist. Throughout the day I can use it to check my "fuel points", calories, steps, or time. Assuming the battery is charged (it lsts 5 days), I don't have to worry about it at all. Wake up, take a shower, get dressed, etc. It can handle the water of the shower, and since it is on my wrist I don't have do anything with it when I undress or get dressed.

I feel the Fitbit, while it has a screen, I would check it far less often as it isn't on my wrist. Additionally I think I would get frustrated by having to unclip it and re-clip it on my clothing, and I fear it would be forgotten once (all it takes is once) and be run through the wash.

Steve Gibson has been playing with something like Sensordrone for measuring ketones for weight loss, near the end of this transcript http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-356.htm

At least on iPhone- sleep monitoring is possible and was being done even on iPhone1.

- but it used a fair amount of battery during the night.

- a pedometer cannot run in the background (access to sensors is not one of those things that allows you to run backgrounded) so it's not practical as a constant pedometer type solution. I suspect on Android, even if you could run a pedometer backgrounded you wouldn't want to because it would again drain battery surprisingly aggressively.

Surely, simple data transfer via Bluetooth hardware has been supported since v1.0 of the protocol so I'm guessing the limitation has something to do with Apple's marketing / product differentiation strategy as usual?

The 4S was the first iPhone to support Bluetooth 4.0, which has a different API, dramatically lower power demands, and no backward compatibility. Supporting older Bluetooth stacks would mean duplicative development effort, for a worse experience. See the 2012 WWDC videos on Core Bluetooth for more detail, and expect to notice a lot more BT gear with the 4S as a minimum requirement.

At least on iPhone- sleep monitoring is possible and was being done even on iPhone1.

- but it used a fair amount of battery during the night.

- a pedometer cannot run in the background (access to sensors is not one of those things that allows you to run backgrounded) so it's not practical as a constant pedometer type solution. I suspect on Android, even if you could run a pedometer backgrounded you wouldn't want to because it would again drain battery surprisingly aggressively.

I didn't realize that about iOS, gf's iPad 2 is only iOS device in the household so far, never tried using it as pedometer ^_^

This looks like a potentially great personal tool- but is there an option to log your activities locally-only and NOT share them with Fitbit.com or other people? Or are users expected to trade privacy for convenience and social stats?

You could use the Tracker independently of the website. However, to get the full experience the Tracker can provide you, you should visit Fitbit.com to view your weekly and monthly metrics, see your sleep quality score, earn badges for your fitness achievements, and more.

But there don't seem to be any further details. It sounds however, that the Fitbits offline tools are unnecessarily watered-down, as I don't see why they'd need to lack anything but the social aspects of the website. Can any Fitbit user here check this out? I'm actually interested in one, but I don't care for my activity and sleeping patterns to be accessible and monitored by anyone other than myself.

It's so sad that when an ordinary, consumer-oriented device is properly compatible with both iPhone and Android, that fact is newsworthy enough to be noted in the headline.

(I'm not criticising the headline, just peeved that it is actually worth noting in the first place).

It is NOT "compatibility" that is of interest here; it is that ***BT4*** is starting to attract more attention.

This is interesting because there are a variety of devices, from smart pens (like LiveScribe) to smart watches (Pebble, Strata) to the iPod nano which could all obviously benefit from the ability to provide info to, and be controlled by the larger screen and better UI of a phone. This was not practical in the past because of the power demands of pre-BT4.

Steve Gibson has been playing with something like Sensordrone for measuring ketones for weight loss, near the end of this transcript http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-356.htm

Last I checked, phone batteries last less than 12 hours on average and that is without the battery usage of an application that will keep the sensors on throughout the day. They are simply not a feasible option for the kind of use I get out of my fitbit.

I've had a hell of a time consistently getting my Fitbit to sync with my computer. I also have a Garmin Forerunner 405, with its accompanying ANT wireless stick, and it seems that the Fitbit's ANT driver and the Garmin ANT continually walk over each other. One works and then the other doesn't, and on reboot everything is changed again. I can go through a complex install-reinstall-reinstall dance and at the end of 30+ minutes have them both working for a couple of days, but it never lasts.

Moving the fitbit's syncing off to bluetooth would solve a massive headache for me.

You could use the Tracker independently of the website. However, to get the full experience the Tracker can provide you, you should visit Fitbit.com to view your weekly and monthly metrics, see your sleep quality score, earn badges for your fitness achievements, and more.

But there don't seem to be any further details. It sounds however, that the Fitbits offline tools are unnecessarily watered-down, as I don't see why they'd need to lack anything but the social aspects of the website. Can any Fitbit user here check this out? I'm actually interested in one, but I don't care for my activity and sleeping patterns to be accessible and monitored by anyone other than myself.

You can use the Fitbit itself idependently of the website. It still counts steps and floors and displays them on the little screen. However, if you want any sort of metric, you'd be logging the numbers yourself into a spreadsheet at the end of the day. There are no "local" tools, nor any way to get the data OFF the fitbit besides a) manual recording or b) letting it sync with the website.

On another note, I got my Fitbit Ultra as a free warranty replacement when my original fitbit went through the wash. I was very upfront about water damage, and they very cool about it and didn't even ask for me to send the old fitbit back; they directed me to recycle it by taking it in to a Target or a Best Buy or other stores that have small electronics recycling programs. I have to give their customer service props for this.

I may jump on this because phone sync is the one feature I've felt was missing from day one. The base station only picks up my fitbit when I'm in the same room, and I don't go in that room every day. It also only checks to sync once every 15 minutes, so just passing through doesn't always get it to sync.

My problem with the Fitbit is how you wear it. I have a Nike Fuelband, you wear it on your wrist. Throughout the day I can use it to check my "fuel points", calories, steps, or time. Assuming the battery is charged (it lsts 5 days), I don't have to worry about it at all. Wake up, take a shower, get dressed, etc. It can handle the water of the shower, and since it is on my wrist I don't have do anything with it when I undress or get dressed.

I feel the Fitbit, while it has a screen, I would check it far less often as it isn't on my wrist. Additionally I think I would get frustrated by having to unclip it and re-clip it on my clothing, and I fear it would be forgotten once (all it takes is once) and be run through the wash.

I guess it is largely personal habit/preference, but in my mind, if you're looking at the screen, you're missing part of the point of the fitbit. I look at the device MAYBE once or twice a day. Other than that, it does an awesome job of fading into the background. It stays clipped to my pocket, I get home, and it syncs automatically. I look at the website, where I have fairly detailed breakdowns of the activity during the day, comparisons to friends, tracking of my weekly/monthly goals, etc.

FWIW though, it isn't a pain at all to pull out and look at, I just don't think that's the point of the device. I don't look at it to motivate me for the immediate next few minutes, but simply by wearing it, I give myself motivation to take the stairs more often, to boost my weekly activity levels, etc.

I have been looking into getting a fitbit lately and this new version hits several of the "if it only did this" wishlist points. If I'm going to spend this much money on a pedometer, it needs to have plenty of bells and whistles. This just pushed it over the edge for me.

This looks like a potentially great personal tool- but is there an option to log your activities locally-only and NOT share them with Fitbit.com or other people? Or are users expected to trade privacy for convenience and social stats?

The app is web based at fitbit.com, but the defaults are not to share your data with anyone.

If you're really worried that some admin at fitbit.com will see how much you walk, well, then you're out of luck.

How well do these things work if you're doing something like soccer? Or is it just suited to something rhythmic like running/walking? Would love to know how far I run during a game because I can use that as an excuse to not go running on other days (which I hate).

I find it beneficial to know what days I should run longer, or at least on off days when I need to be a little more active to achieve a proper activity level. I try to average 10,000 steps a day and there's been several days where low steps or a low activity level has motivated me enough to go on a walk or run to make up for it.

- a pedometer cannot run in the background (access to sensors is not one of those things that allows you to run backgrounded) so it's not practical as a constant pedometer type solution. I suspect on Android, even if you could run a pedometer backgrounded you wouldn't want to because it would again drain battery surprisingly aggressively.

This. Before my last vacation I actually installed a pedometer app on my Nexus because I was curious to see how much walking we really did (a lot, as it turns out). Halfway through the first day, my phone was drained with no charger in sight. I uninstalled the app that night and didn't look back.

Phone-as-all-in-one-gadget is great in theory, but asking it to do too many things kills battery life.

This looks like a potentially great personal tool- but is there an option to log your activities locally-only and NOT share them with Fitbit.com or other people? Or are users expected to trade privacy for convenience and social stats?

As far as I know, the only way to see trends (like how many steps you walked in a week, month, year, etc.) is on Fitbit.com, but you don't have to share anything with others.

You can establish connections to Facebook, Twitter and WordPress, but it's opt-in, not opt-out. You can also register under any name/email address you want, so you can be Clark Abernathy from Vatican City and no one will know better.

I wish there was a desktop app, but I think Fitbit is pretty accommodating of how social (or unsocial) people want to be.

I wish there was a desktop app, but I think Fitbit is pretty accommodating of how social (or unsocial) people want to be.

Yes, I wish there was a desktop app, too. The idea that you have to hand your data to a company just to get simple graphs and mathematical calculations every computer these days can do, from a smartphone on, is a bit frustrating to me, but it seems to be the new norm, unfortunately. I am glad to hear there are at least options to make your data a little less public, however. Thanks for your input.

Love my og fitbit. My primary question though: will this new one track cycling? My current fitbit gen 1 freaks out when I go out on my bike. Sometimes it thinks I've climbed 400 flights of stairs, other times it stops tracking altogether, other times it logs a million steps. Which totally messes up the stats tracking and becomes a pain to correct every time I ride.

My email from Fitbit today didn't mention the possibility of Bluetooth on android ... Would piss me off if I got this now and my 1 year old HTC EVO3D wasn't among the blessed phones

... I lost my fitbit ultra on a camping trip, losing 10 days of data with it.

Just run 3 times a week?

Since I lost it, I haven't felt compelled to track my food. I've lost 43 pounds since April partly thanks to tracking everything with Fitbit ... And running 6 days a week. With my Fitbit and the website I know every day if I'm on my 750 calorie deficit target, 1.5 lbs a week ... And have had very consistent results ... Until I lost it, but I'm still going the right way.

will this new one track cycling? My current fitbit gen 1 freaks out when I go out on my bike. Sometimes it thinks I've climbed 400 flights of stairs, other times it stops tracking altogether, other times it logs a million steps. Which totally messes up the stats tracking and becomes a pain to correct every time I ride.

Having had a fitbit for some time, I'm sure you know this but you can easily record that as an activity. Hold the button down until the activity timer starts, then hold the button down until it stops when you're finished. On the site later just set that activity period to cycling. You can convert that time period of data into an activity after the fact if you forget.

Erm, hello, Fitbit's Zip sounds great but the Fitbug Air is way better. It will cost you less dough for a start and it also has more stuff help you sync your progress. And yes, it also uses Bluetooth Smart. Don't know why no one has mentioned the Fitbug Air anywhere.